I have done my share as have most bloggers about what has happened at the FDA, but long and short of it, is we had a little bit of a lack of keeping up with technology. Last year they were blasted by Congress for not even asking for more money over the past 2 years, so again it’s a bit of the old mind set here with not wanting or maybe accepting “change” all the way around. In the post below, I somewhat made some observations in my travels all over healthcare.

“Some of our members don’t even use computers,” Olcott said. “They have some discomfort talking about technology.” ...so if this happens at the top levels...I do ask myself...where does this leave me? They have staff that writes the legislation...so who's really in control here...do we need to lobby the staff instead? What impact does this have on electronic medical records? What does this do for HIPAA? ...some questions kicking around in my head..who is in charge?

So we had the FDA still writing studies in longhand on paper and members of Congress that felt uncomfortable about talking about technology! So that pretty much explains how we go to where we are today.

I still think that bank of servers for the FDA in Washington would be helpful to have manufacturers of drugs and food products report in before packaging and shipping products, would help the FDA better allow their employees time too as if they try to do enforcement and inspections without some business intelligence and who to see and where to go, it will be a mess. BD

Under Obama’s proposed budget, the FDA would receive an additional $1 billion to “increase and improve inspections, domestic surveillance, laboratory capacity and domestic response to prevent and control food-borne illness.” The increased funding is directed to the precise areas of the FDA that have been roundly criticized in the recent outbreaks.

In additional to increasing funding for FDA food inspection efforts, Obama also proposes hiking the funding for FDA reviews of new drugs, treatments, and head-to-head trials of drugs. Under the proposed budget, the FDA would get $1.1 billion to pay for the increased review of proposed drugs. There has been a call by many consumers to increase the use of cheaper, generic drugs, which have been shown to work just as well, if not better, than costlier brand-name and patented drugs.

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Taxing the rich at 100% won't pay for Obama's budget. The Wall Street Journal has reported that taxing the rich at 100% won't pay for Obama's budget. Barack Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 per year. Where is he going to get the money? The numbers indicate Obama will need to take 100% of the income of everyone making over $75,000.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.